Forums

At a Glance: Are you a minority that has faced discrimination? A positive role model is here and his name is Bubba from the game Bubba N' Stix. Even two years before Core Design Ltd. brought the world a strong feminine role model with Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, they were thinking about the impoverished minority. They made Chuck Rock, a game that was about the cavemen minority. You know what killed them off? SUV driving white men who worship the bloated pig demon called "Uncle Samerica". With Bubba N' Stix they had finally brought some dignity back to the most heroless of minorities: idiots. Pumped full of Vicodin because of recent surgery, I am fully prepared to take you on a magic boat right straight into the heart of comedy. This is going to be awesome, Pitstoppers, because I finally got permission to exit out of the 8-bit realm into the fully 4-D realism of 50 bit. That means that for every little box you see someone actually bit them out of a large square, spit them on the screen, and hypnotized you into believing that you're actually playing a game involving foxes and stars.

Game Plot: When I looked at this category after playing this game I started to laugh. I'm actually still laughing right now, but my tears of amusement are now tears of anguish and probably that bleach. My mail order bride keeps slipping it into my kool-aid because I accidentally "firebombed her house during the war". Some people are ungrateful about the work you do to free their country from their own people. Just like my wife's stories about her "emotions", Bubba N' Stix gives you nothing even remotely resembling coherence in a manner that doesn't require a degree in Jingaology. Clues are left in a manner that only if you genetically made a guy who had the brain of Batman and Sherlock Holmes in the same brain could figure out. That's right; Sherbat Holmesman is your only hope to figure out how to get a whole bunch of lights to turn on.

This game clearly has a message all over it: stop questioning the establishment and just do what people tell you. Sorry, was reading some Doonesbury.

Your one constant companion in this game is a little green haired thing called "Stix". He is a stick, and you use him like one. This game teaches us all a valuable lesson in the ways of life: your best friend will be one that you can shove into holes and use to open barrels. Anyone that you can't throw and have them come right back into your hands is a worthless companion. Discard them immediately.

Speaking of opening barrels, this game gives you absolutely no clue as to what you are doing. I like to think they wanted to fully recreate the experience of being a hillbilly idiot. This is the only reason that my brain can manufacture without pumping blood straight out of my nose at high pressures. The effect of not having any guidance would not hurt you so badly if your life bar didn't stay nearly at zero all the time. Prepare to spend the majority of the game with just a pathetically tiny little stick. No pills, no little guys with medic packs, no blob versions of yourself can help you get that stick higher. Welcome to the world of dealing with a Russian banshee that doesn't care about your feelings. Sorry, projecting

Weapons: Your buddy Stix is your only weaponry. If you lose him, which happens a couple of times, expect to flail around uselessly. Pray he never decides to leave your pathetic self. Go to a counseling center when he does. This gave me some valuable advice about what to do when you fear someone is about to leave you: lock them away. I've already done that to my wife AMALIJI. I typed it in caps because she constantly yells and it hurts the little circles in my brain that help me think.

Enemies: Much like the self motivational books you keep dusty on the shelf to impress the first girl to step into your love dungeon, the only true enemies in this game are you and your bad breath. Enemies exist primarily to annoy you and wander around.

This does not diminish their power, however. Your foes will randomly become invincible for whatever reason the game wishes. Certain things are able to be affected while others can't. Have you ever tried to punch a guy and he turns invincible? And he starts punching you but you can't fight back while your little stick friend just starts laughing at you? Then your pants fall down? I'm bored with this joke.

Levels: The game starts you in the forest and slowly moves you through four total stages. Each one of these stages becomes more difficult. That's a typo, I meant to write "incomprehensible". Situations through this game will require you to guess like a prostitute in a transvestite bar. Guessing wildly may work fine when you try to "revolutionize" your workplace with your "thank goodness it's Friday" posters and your "I don't want to be here" coffee mug. But when you have buzz saws and flying bubble dogs trying to rip you in half with their fearsome bubble jaws, experimentation is as risky as your "drinking mountain dew" birth control measures.

Bosses: There is only one, like Highlander. But like Christopher Lambert, this boss leads a sad and miserable life full of failed dreams and nightmares involving the 1980s. When you first encounter this mythic beast, you just notice a bump in the ground. Soon, like jack and the beanstalk told by an autistic constipated moose, it emerges like a jolly green leavemealoneImamoose. Instead of leaves, it has blades. And it shoots lasers. And randomly changes tactics. And it writes angry letters to your landlord to get you evicted.

Additions to games with little explanation are a staple of the classic gaming industry. Just about every adventure game includes you needing to combine a ham and a wrench to make a "porkscrew". When creativity fails and you have to make an excuse for the bandwidth bills for LANing Duke Nukem 3D every day, you just make something up.

Defining Moment: The feeling of elation I got the first time I crammed my friend into a hole in the wall. The blood stains eventually came out of my jeans, but the happiness would last forever.

Graphics

-5

Gameplay

-10

Story

-10

Sound

-8

Fun

-10

Overall

-43

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

This space-age device is a cardboard box with two holes in it. The operative sticks a hand in one end. The contact inserts a hand in the other end. With both hands shielded from prying eyes, a secret handshake can commence.

About This Column

The Rom Pit is dedicated to reviewing the most bizarre and screwed up classic console games from the 1980's, the ones that made you wonder what kind of illegal substances the programmers were smoking when they worked on them. Strangely enough, the same illegal substances are often necessary to enjoy or make sense of most of these titles. No horrible Nintendo game is safe from the justice of the ROM Pit.